Adoption of Global Containerized Freight E-Commerce Continues to Expand

INTTRA, a leading provider of e-commerce solutions for the ocean freight industry, reports an increase in usage of their global e-commerce solutions by the containerized shipping industry. 

In 2011, transactions through INTTRA’s e-commerce platform increased by 24 percent. INTTRA processed 22.4 million container transactions in 2011, representing the largest share of global ocean containerized freight e-commerce. 

This growth reflects the industry’s continued desire to maximize focus on core competitive differentiators.

“With an increase in transaction volumes comes ‘big data’ that can be transformed into actionable performance information that can uncover new potential for supply chain efficiencies and operations for carriers and shippers alike,” said Ken Bloom, INTTRA, CEO.

David Aquino, veteran analyst and currently V.P. of Operations Strategy for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, agreed.

“The effective management of digital assets as it relates to product development, sales life cycle management, reporting or financial activities is becoming a area of primary focus,” he said.  “Organizations which have struggled to manage a traditional physical supply chain will be destroyed if they have an ineffective or unmanaged digital supply chain.”

INTTRA facilitates this by streamlining and standardizing the processes and common transactions in ocean container shipping via a global, independent transactional network that efficiently connects carriers and their customers.

Based on Drewry Maritime Research’s projected 2011 global container growth of 6.5 percent, INTTRA’s transaction growth represents almost four times 2011 industry volume growth..  As shippers continue to find value in automating their ocean freight buying, they also see the benefit of easy-to-access, Web-based solutions. Usage of INTTRA’s I-ACT online channel increased by 36 percent, year over year.

INTTRA’s e-commerce growth was strong among established global shipping markets.  INTTRA identified the following markets as having substantial year over year growth:  China 21 percent; United States 28 percent; United Kingdom 52 percent; South Korea 63 percent, and Italy 75 percent growth.

Emerging markets, where the global shipping industry sees great potential for trade growth, continue to step up adoption of INTTRA e-commerce to benefit from easy access to advanced technology at a low cost.  Agility’s 2012 Emerging Markets Logistics Index ranks emerging markets by investment potential and progress each year.  These Agility top 10 ranked emerging markets showed significant year over year growth in INTTRA usage:  India 25 percent; Saudi Arabia 123 percent; Indonesia 40 percent; Russia 135 percent; Malaysia 44 percent; Chile 21 percent, and Mexico 24 percent.

“We are pleased to see e-commerce usage increasing across the globe especially during an economic time when companies need to increase operational efficiencies and add value to their business.  INTTRA’s goal from the start has been to create a standardized, global industry platform that would unite carriers with their customers to streamline the ocean freight buying process.  Network connectivity not only increases efficiencies but also improves trading partner collaboration, and data sharing and analysis,” said Bloom

INTTRA recently introduced OceanMetrics, a performance measurement platform for INTTRA’s user community that uses INTTRA transaction data to evaluate schedule reliability and booking performance.